June

Basel in June: the fair is a week, the art stays longer.

Art Basel runs the 19th to 22nd, with previews on the 17th and 18th, and Liste next door from the 16th. The institutional programme around it is where the month really happens. Steve McQueen at Schaulager, Vija Celmins at Beyeler, Ser Serpas at the Kunsthalle, and the Serpentine pavilion opens in London the week before.

Show of the month

Vija Celmins

15 JUN Fondation Beyeler Riehen / Basel

Around ninety works, mostly paintings and drawings, with a handful of what Celmins calls three-dimensional paintings. Sixty years of looking at surfaces: spider webs, desert floors, oceans, galaxies. The Beyeler hung them sparely. The night-sky drawings are the ones people will stand in front of longest. Bêka and Lemoine's half-hour portrait of the artist plays in a separate room; worth the time.

Gallery site ↗

Also this month

6 JUN · LONDON · SERPENTINE GALLERIES, KENSINGTON GARDENS

Serpentine Pavilion 2025: A Capsule in Time

Marina Tabassum Architects

The twenty-fifth Serpentine pavilion, and Marina Tabassum's first project built entirely in wood. Four capsule-shaped volumes along a north-south axis, translucent skins, one of the capsules kinetic. Built around a semi-mature ginkgo. The shelves inside hold books on Bengali culture, literature, ecology and poetry; the pavilion's afterlife is imagined as a mobile library.

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Marina Tabassum's Serpentine Pavilion 2025, a wooden capsule structure with translucent facades in Kensington Gardens.

17 JUN · BASEL · MESSE BASEL

Art Basel 2025

289 galleries from 42 countries. Giovanni Carmine's Unlimited runs sixty-seven projects; Stefanie Hessler's Parcours takes Clarastrasse and pushes it to the Rhine, with an installation on Münsterplatz. Katharina Grosse paints the Messeplatz magenta in a work called CHOIR, acrylic on asphalt and fabric, 16 by 91 by 55 metres, peeled up and recycled afterwards. The fair's first edition under Maike Cruse's second year.

Gallery site ↗

15 JUN · BASEL / MÜNCHENSTEIN · SCHAULAGER

Steve McQueen: Bass

Steve McQueen

An LED light-and-sound installation spanning three floors and the full height of the Schaulager atrium. 1,300-odd bulbs cycle through the colour spectrum on a thirty-minute loop; a composition built with Marcus Miller and four other bassists plays off it. McQueen's most abstract work to date. You sit in it longer than you think you will.

Gallery site ↗

Steve McQueen's Bass installation at Schaulager, Basel, 2025, an immersive LED light environment.

13 JUN · BASEL · KUNSTHALLE BASEL

Ser Serpas: Of my life

Ser Serpas

Sculpture, painting and a series of performances developed with Margo Korableva Performance Theatre, staged across five rooms of the Kunsthalle. Serpas presses wet canvases against each other and lets the imprint stand as the image. The performances, looped through fair week, are slow gestures stripped of narrative. J.J. Charlesworth's ArtReview piece on it is worth reading before you go.

Gallery site ↗

20 JUN · LONDON · NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

Jenny Saville: The Anatomy of Painting

Jenny Saville

Saville's first major UK museum survey. Forty-five works, chronological, starting with Propped (1992) from the Glasgow days. The charcoal pregnancy drawings take a wall of their own. Curator Sarah Howgate worked with Saville on the hang. The paint is as thick as you remember.

Gallery site ↗

17 JUN · BASEL · HALL 1.1, MESSE BASEL

Liste Art Fair Basel, 30th edition

Liste's thirtieth, Nikola Dietrich's first as director. Ninety-nine galleries, forty-eight first-timers. The hall has been re-rigged by Martina Kausch Architektinnen, which breaks the rhythm of the booths in a way that actually helps. Jacob Fabricius programmed the performances. Go early.

Gallery site ↗

Footnote

— Coffee with silt.. The Diller Scofidio + Renfro canal-espresso in Venice remained the drink of Basel week even a thousand kilometres away. Collectors arrived at Unlimited comparing notes on whether they could taste the lagoon. Most said no, one said yes, one said she hadn't dared.